We are 36 Jewish and civil rights organizations representing hundreds of thousands of supporters who are deeply concerned about the long-standing and pervasive problem of anti-Semitic anti-Zionism that has incited hatred of Jews and acts of aggression and violence against Jewish and pro-Israel students on your campus.

As you know, in March the UC Regents unanimously approved a Statement Against Intolerance, which acknowledges that anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic forms of anti-Zionism are no less discriminatory than racism, homophobia or sexism, and “have no place at the University of California.”

Recent events on your campus demonstrate the critical importance of promptly and comprehensively implementing the Regents statement at UC Irvine.

Last Wednesday evening, UCI Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) carried out a pre-meditated and violent disruption of an event hosted by Jewish and pro-Israel student groups. According to eyewitness accounts and video footage, an angry mob of more than 40 members of SJP and other affiliated organizations attempted to forcibly enter the room where 10 students were watching a documentary film about the Israeli Defense Forces. Understandably terrified and fearing for their safety, Jewish and pro-Israel students who were at the film screening held the door shut to prevent aggressive protesters from entering the room, whereupon protesters pounded on the room’s door and windows and, for about an hour, screamed slogans that demonized and delegitimized Israel and called for and condoned terrorism against Jews, such as “Fuck Israel!”, “Intifada, Intifada, long live the Intifada!” and “When people are occupied, resistance is justified.” Event attendees were effectively held hostage for more than 45 minutes after their event had ended, until they could be safely escorted from the room by police. Continue reading →

At UC Irvine, Jews believe wrong students were escorted out of anti-Israel mob

The night of May 18 was supposed to be an evening of learning and conversation for Eliana Kopley. The University of California, Irvine (UC Irvine) sophomore, who had just attended a lecture about the Holocaust and was walking a short distance to another campus building that was hosting a film screening about Israeli soldiers, found herself confronted by an angry mob.

“I was terrified. There is no other word to describe how I felt,” Kopley told the Haym Salomon Center.”

Kopley had intended to join 10 classmates and guests of the private event hosted by Students Supporting Israel. When she arrived, approximately 50 anti-Israel activists convened by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) were pounding on the doors and windows, and shouting violent chants targeting Israel, Jews, and the police.

As the mob tried to gain entrance to the event, one protestor yelled, “If we’re not allowed in, you’re not allowed in!”

With the angry mob physically barricading the entrance, the 20-year-old Kopley, who stands less than five feet tall, was forced to leave the scene amid taunts of “intifada, intifada—long live the intifada! F**k Israel and f**k the police.”

But Kopley was not alone. A group of female students accompanied her as she escaped to safety in a nearby building.

“When I turned back, at that moment, I looked at one of the girls and wanted to hide and cry,” Kopley said.

While the UC Irvine sophomore was hiding in darkness, the scene inside the movie screening was equally frightening.

Veteran Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldier Eran Izak moved to the United States three years ago. The recently married construction worker was on hand May 18 to answer questions from the audience about his life in the IDF and the film “Beneath the Helmet.” What he experienced was something he never thought he’d see in America.

“As the film was playing we began hearing a lot of shouting outside,” said Izak. “It was immediately clear what was happening. The woman in charge of the event was literally holding the door closed with her hands as the mob tried to break into the classroom. As the shouting grew louder, it became apparent that we would not be allowed to leave, so we called campus security and the police.”

Meanwhile, the film was still playing even though nobody was paying attention by that point, as a sense of fear gripped the room.

“They were banging on the glass and the door and we could hear screaming outside,” Izak said. “The students had a look of panic on their faces—they were terrified. Finally the police arrived, pushed the protesters back a little, and escorted us to our cars.” Continue reading →

They meet in small groups on campus; funded by foreign money. They understand that this method of operation gives them more influence than any act of physical violence would. They are young people who convince others; they are builders of public opinion. Step by step they take control of the leaderships of student unions and organizations; pro-Palestinian activists join extreme left-wingers in activism against Israeli elements.

This is the new intifada. You won’t hear about in the next news update; it is not an uprising within Israel’s borders, and it stopped being just about the settlements, occupation and peace treaties a long time ago. It is far away from us; it is influential, exhilarating; it speaks in a new, young language and has one goal: The annihilation of Israel as a Jewish state.

Campus Hatred

The battle for America / Tzipi Shmilovitz

Special: Israeli, Jewish students fighting back as hostility grows on leading campuses in America
Full Story

Anti-Israeli elements have reached the conclusion that burning an Israeli flag does not make for good photos. It is too extreme, too controversial, and too barbaric; it doesn’t do the job anymore; the world has changed. They found that burning the Zionist idea rather than the flag is much more effective.

Over the past few months this campaign has been taken to the next level. At the University of California public university system, at the University of California, San Diego, at Brooklyn College in New York, at Oxford University in Britain and on other campuses there are calls for boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel, and activists also disrupt lectures of Israeli representatives – it is all part of a broad campaign to delegitimize Israel.

It is not coincidental that a significant part of the delegitimization campaign against Israel is talking place on campuses. The arena was carefully selected. Campuses have always been fertile ground for exchanging ideas, for activity aimed at fomenting social change and for calls for universal ideals because it is easier to plant the seeds of unruliness in the minds of 18 year olds, who are more open to innovative and revolutionary ideas. Within a decade millions of young, influential people within government, the economy, the arts, culture, the judicial system and research – those who have been inculcated with the anti-Israel idea – may adopt the notion that Israel does not have the right to exist as a Jewish state. ‘Why do the Jews need a state of their own?’ They will wonder. Continue reading →

Jewish at U.C. — the real report, by the students themselves

The 17-year-old sophomore was standing in U.C. Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza alongside other students defending Israel.

Therefore, reasoned the pro-Palestinian protestors, Dubnov, who was born in Israel, must be a liar. “I stayed calm,” he recalled of the incident last spring. “They don’t actually know what they’re talking about.”

U.C. Berkeley, like any university, is a bastion of free speech, a testament to the power of the First Amendment and fundamental American values. At the same time, U.C. campuses have long been the sites of verbal attacks against Israel and, occasionally, Jews.

Divestment resolutions, heckling of Israeli speakers, “Israel Apartheid Week,” calls for academic boycotts of Israel and ethnic slurs — as well as an occasional swastika scrawled here or carved there — have become part of university life. Continue reading →

Note: The following anonymous opinion was posted on the myUCIrvine web page. In recent years, Jewish students who have spoken out about their experiences at UCI, have complained about being ridiculed and ostracised. For this reason a number of students have left the campus or graduated early. To view the photographs click the link below.

Scandal at UCI: Faculty fuels conflict as students look for peace

“Pictures of blood stained flags and a memorial to hate speech has recently been put up in the Student Center… by a professor.”

If there is anything UC Irvine utterly despises, it must be freedom, equality, and democracy. I say this in full confidence because the only country that the administration at UCI allows to be slandered, libeled, and publicly desecrated is anything pertaining to Israel or the Jewish people.

UC Irvine prides itself on being a campus where all views and opinions can be heard, shared, as well as respected. I am sorry to say that this just isn’t the case. Take the Cross Culture Center (CCC), what should be the hub of diversity on campus, as an example. The CCC “is dedicated to creating and maintaining a socially just campus, fostering the cultural identities within our community, and providing opportunities for intellectual exchange, leadership development, and community engagement” but clearly, they do not accomplish that. A demonstration of everything wrong with the CCC is the mural in the center proudly depicting the infamous El- Hajj Malik El- Shabazz. For those of you who are not familiar with Shabazz, he was a preacher of anti-Semitism, black supremacy and encouraged violence amongst his supporters. Before his days as a member of the Nation of Islam, Shabazz told the US Draft Board that he, as well as his black supremacist supporters, wanted to “steal us some guns, and kill us [some] crackers.” This is a wonderful example of what the Cross Culture Center stands for because the university not only allows, but rewards this type of behavior.

The most hateful, disgusting, and narrow minded display of intolerance on campus every year is the Muslim Student Union and Students for Justice in Palestine’s week aimed at showing their baseless and unjustified hatred of the Jewish people. Every year for one week, UCI students are bothered with a public display of abhorrence towards one national ethnicity, the Jews. This is not surprising since the MSU has connections to the terrorist group Hamas, the group responsible for launching over 8000 rockets into Israel and kidnapping Israeli soldiers as well as the Muslim Brotherhood. This disgusting act has not only never been condemned, it occurs every year, much to the students in SJP’s pleasure. To make things even worse, in the Student Center, a place where students go to study throughout the day, there is a wall of pictures honoring these detestable acts and the bigoted speakers SJP brings to campus. Continue reading →

The article stands in stark contradiction to a previous article written in 2009 by the same author describing Vicious Jew-Hatred at UC Irvine.

In an article published in the May 2009 Jewish Journal entitled Protecting Hate at UC Irvine a former UC Irvine student wrote: ” I have been told to censor myself so that potential students are not afraid to come to UCI, but I have had enough censorship”.

In March 2008, 20 “current and former” students issued a Press Release expressing deep concern about the anti-Semitism at UC Irvine and Hillels “response” to it. That story was covered in JTA and the Jerusalem Post”.

On February 12, 2008, the Orange County Independent Task Force on anti-Semitism completed its year-long investigation at UCI. Over 80 hours of interviews, as well as, documents, written complaints and numerous visits to the campus were used in the compilation of the subsequent Report and Recommendations. The complete 34 page report can be found here . The Task Force has continued to monitor and report on events on the UC Irvine campus.

You did not write to me directly, though you did blind-copy me on your recent widely-circulated letter (forwarded below), in which you mentioned my name 18 times and attacked a letter I had sent to the heads of the Orange County Jewish Federation and Hillel. My letter urged these Jewish communal organizations to withdraw their funding and promotion of the Olive Tree Initiative (OTI) because at least 15 of the OTI’s speakers are affiliated with organizations that have ties to terrorist groups that have murdered Jews, advocate the elimination of the Jewish state, and support boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaigns against Israel. I also pointed out to the OC Federation and Hillel that it is wrong for Jewish communal resources to be used for a trip that engages Jewish students in activities that desecrate Jewish holy days, such as the OTI trip in 2010, during which students spent the two days of Rosh Hashanah and the following Sabbath (and other Sabbaths) engaged in non-Jewish activity in Jordan and the disputed territories.

You fiercely criticized my letter, stating that I “made up facts” and that my analysis was “incomplete and misleading,” “completely inaccurate,” and filled with “wrong information and missing facts,” “a pattern of misinformation,” “erroneous statements,” and “distortion.” I would like to reply to your charges, which I believe are wholly baseless, extremely disingenuous, and highly offense to the Jewish community in general, and to me personally as a UC faculty member, and as a Jew. Continue reading →